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Problem: New Macbook Pro, two offices, lots of peripherals/monitors/etc to plug in and disconnect at least twice a day.

I plug in four to five different items into my new MacBook Pro with Retina Display every morning when I get to work. All of these get unplugged at the end of the day, or alternatively when I leave to go to my other office on the other side of campus, in which case I’m plugging/unplugging stuff four times in a day.

Aside from the tediousness of it, there’s also the issue of keeping the two display adapters in the proper order so my external displays aren’t swapped back and forth every time I plug in.

Check out the pictures below of the 0.1 version of my homemade dock thingy:

The dock thingy inserted into the MacBook Pro

I have some gaps between the adapters I need to seal up, and the MagSafe slips out too easily, but otherwise this is a good version 0.1

Yes, its hideous, but it took a total of 5 minutes of work. Turns out the hot water outlet on the office coffeemaker is the exact right temperature needed to soften the pellets. Just pour the pellets into a ceramic cup (don’t use paper or styrofoam unless you want the plastic to stick to the cup), then fill the cup with hot water. Once the pellets turn clear, they are ready to be formed. Poor the water out of the mug and then extract your mass of plastic.

I “cooked” too much plastic (about half the 6oz container) so I broke the glob in half and put the rest back in the bottle. I rolled the remaining part out with my hands like you would have in elementary school when making a snake with art clay. Then I wrapped it around the cables, being sure to press down around each adapter end and especially in between them. After that’s done, you let it cool until the product turns white again. If you mess up, just re-heat the product and start all over again.

This only took about 1/4 of the 6oz container, so I have plenty of pellets left to make one for my other office and will still have 3oz of Instamorph to piddle around with.

Yeah, I just ran into this issue. My original pictured above slightly mis-aligned the display adapters. I ended up ruining the adapters by *gasp* dunking the whole assembly (disconnected from devices of course) into a bowl of hot water.

Once you roll the plastic into a long cord and then fold it over the cables, it seems to not bond to itself perfectly, so it wasn’t necessary to completely melt but just to soften, then the whole thing snapped open on one end and I removed it kind of as a clam shell.

I would recommend using a cigarette lighter to locally soften the plastic if you need to ever remove the cables. Alternatively, use some wax or clay to protect the cable ends and then dunk in water.

Also, the less plastic you use, the easier it would be to pry apart and remove later.

I’m sure this would be better if you made some type of mold out of wood, rubber, foam or something like that? This was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this project. I don’t use alot of adapters so I wouldn’t need this but I might try to make a mold for the DIY’ers that do need something like this.

I think I have the exact solution for this! I just published it on Quirky — basically, if it generates enough excitement they will actually make it. Please Vote and comment on the Quirky page so we can get this thing to the top and get it made. Chris – if you get a ton of people to vote on it and it gets made, I will get you one for free! Check it out here: http://www.quirky.com/ideations/297651

Hi Chris! Last summer you spoke with Cole Flournoy about his DeskDock project and even did the write up above. I wanted to reach out and let you know that we launched DeskDock (Now known as ZenDock) on Kickstarter and did really well. We’ve since opened a webstore (www.zenboxx.com) and are now accepting pre-orders. I wanted to extend a special offer to you and your readers for $20off to thank you for all the great feedback you provided early on. We’re super excited about getting the product out and hope you’ll check us out. Please use the coupon code LaunchSale107 during the check out process and know that we are offering free shipping in the US as well. Thanks again and hope you’re doing well!